The first rule of the Impactors Club is that it's For Men Only. The second rule of the Impactors Club is that... well, you get the idea.
The Impactors is for men who enjoy "adult hard riding." They're into "Bareback, Saddle, Naked, etc. Leather, Sweat, and sharp spurs." Sharp spurs are essential. The things they like to ride are horses, ponies, and donkeys.
Poe's Law states that it's almost impossible to distinguish between extreme religious fundamentalism and parodies of it. I think there needs to be a similar law that would apply to sadistic freaks, because I can't tell whether the Impactors is a joke... or not.
Most Supreme Court cases are as dry as a particle-board sandwich. But not the one you can read about here. That's because this case involves a genuine wackjob cult named Summum, which believes, amongst other things, in sacred mummification of pets.
Scientific researchers placed a shrimp on a shrimp-size treadmill in order to measure its speed and endurance. This information, they say, "will give us a better idea of how marine animals can perform in their native habitat when faced with increasing pathogens and immunological challenges." Luckily for us, they videotaped the experiment.
The video has become hugely popular on the internet, spawning numerous remixes. For instance, witness Shrimp Jamming to Muzak:
There's nothing oddball about this ad--except its incredible lameness! Look at those stupid birds that dominate three-quarters of the page. What do they tell the reader about the product? Absolutely nothing! This full-page ad could have run as a tiny spot with the same text at the back of the magazine for a fraction of the cost. And it would have achieved the same results.
Imagine the malicious glee at the ad agency that created this: "We just grossed a hundred K for two blotches of paint!"
According to Wikipedia, Luis Buñuel is "one of the most important directors in the history of cinema." His most notorious film is the 1929 Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog) which includes the infamous scene of a woman's eyeball being sliced with a razor in slow-motion. This is the one film of his that the professor discussed in the film class I took in college.
Much less well-known is his 1932 Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan (Land without bread). The film is a short travelogue about the poverty-stricken Las Hurdes region of Spain. What makes the film unusual is that as one scene of misery after another appears onscreen, the narration proceeds in a "flat and disinterested manner" and Brahms's Symphony No. 4 plays as background music. Some historians argue that the film was actually the very first mockumentary, parodying the documentary form.
The film can be seen in its entirety on YouTube, but not in English. I'm not sure if there is an English-language version of it. The only scene in English I could find was the one below, in which a goat supposedly trips and falls off a cliff. In reality, Buñuel's crew shot the goat and threw its body down the cliff. This was in the days before PETA. YouTube includes a "Warning: Animal Abuse" label with the excerpt. As a student of the weird, I've become pretty much shockproof, but if the sight of a goat plummeting down a cliff will disturb you, you might want to skip the video.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.